I think this may be the fluffiest thing I've ever written, but of course it still had to be lemony (because duh). I've just been feeling pretty angsty after re-reading some of my favorite leafygirl KakaSaku stories lately. So, enjoy!

–

The door to Sakura's bedroom flew open as the pair stumbled through it, breathing heavily and grabbing at each other's clothing in haste.

Sakura's limbs weighed down with alcohol as she fell backwards naked on the bed, yet she felt as though she were floating as the silver-haired shinobi moved the lavish attentions of his tongue from her tight nipple to her taut stomach and further still, landing at her most intimate of places, causing the young kunoichi to sigh and squirm with building excitement.

Sakura wondered briefly when they had left the pub, but the thought left her hazy mind as quickly as it had come when he crawled back up her body and kissed her deeply. Kakashi tasted like whiskey and her own musky essence, and the way he kneaded Sakura's bare breasts roughly as she reached for his trousers made her deliciously delirious. She was acutely aware of the booze coursing through her body alongside the pleasure, and it only worked to heighten her ecstasy.

Once free of his own clothes, Kakashi aligned himself at her entrance, a strange, pained expression glazing over his unmasked features as he sheathed himself inside her almost too eagerly, both of them moaning in unison at the connection.

He leaned down to kiss her on her open mouth once more as he moved, thrusting in and out of her heat with frantic necessity, losing himself in the way the pink-haired kunoichi was mewling his name, her flesh pliant and soft under his own hard body. When she dug her fingernails into the skin on his back and threw her head back, eyes squeezed shut, letting out a long, strangled cry, Kakashi crossed the threshold himself and strained inside of her before collapsing atop the duvet.

"Happy Birthday, Sakura," Kakashi mumbled sleepily, and the green-eyed woman sighed contentedly as she curled into his arms and fell fast asleep.

–

The sight of the blue plus sign punched her in the gut like a fist, rushing all of the air out of her lungs.

Sakura's body had felt different for weeks now, and even her chakra seemed to have been redirected to something growing inside her, but she didn't believe it to be true until she saw the test result staring back at her.

And there, sitting on the toilet in the staff bathroom at the hospital, she cried.

–

Most of the village was asleep when Sakura slipped out under the cover of darkness. She passed his apartment on her way to the wall and paused only briefly, knowing that if she hesitated too long, she would be lost. She had already made up her mind. This was the only way. She couldn't ruin another life.

Undetected, Sakura scaled the wall and vanished into the forest beyond the Hidden Village.

–

Even after all these years, her scent was like a drug to him; he knew it was her. She was near. He could sense her chakra.

His tracking senses led the pale-haired Jounin to the makeshift marketplace along the bank of the sea, above the docks. Nearby, a black-haired woman bent over a basket of fresh fish, oblivious to the presence of a fellow Leaf-nin.

"Sakura?" Kakashi uttered in disbelief. The raven-haired woman whipped around, and upon her proverbial green eyes meeting his, any shadow of a doubt was washed clean from his mind.

"Sakura!" the shinobi shouted, but she had already taken to the rooftops, sprinting away from the Leaf-nin at lightning speed. He followed in quick pursuit, his comrades joining him in the chase.

It was over as soon as it began, when the woman, her skills rusty from years of nonuse, slipped and fell; she landed in the arms of Hatake Kakashi, who pinned her to the ground beneath them, straddling her with one knee on either side and both of her wrists gripped tightly in his hands. He gazed upon her familiar face with one wide eye, the way a man dying of thirst looks at water.

"Please," Sakura breathed out with effort, her tense muscles relaxing with defeat, her green irises misty. "My son. Let me bring my son."

–

The trip back to Konoha from the Lightning Country was long and tedious. Sakura did her best to ease her young son's anxiety when he cried at the unfamiliarity of it all, rocking him on the train and pointing at the countryside as it passed in a green blur. She sang to him in a quiet, soothing voice.

More than once, when Sakura glanced across the train car at Kakashi, she caught him staring, but he never looked away.

He didn't say a single word to her during the entire journey.

The boy's silver hair matched his own.

–

"You know, if it wasn't Kakashi who had gotten to you first, you'd have been killed."

Sakura stared at her feet, her artificially blackened hair hanging low in front of her face. The older woman's eyes flicked to the sleepy child curled in the lap her former student.

"Who's the father?" Tsunade asked from her seat on the other side of the desk, her voice taking on a softer, more motherly tone as her gaze settled on the pint-sized mop of silver hair.

Sakura looked up into the older woman's eyes. She noted the wrinkles that seemed to have set in since she last saw her Shishou.

"You already know."

–

When Sakura left Tsunade's office and stepped out into the hallway, her little boy frightfully gripping her hand, she was greeted by Kakashi leaning against the wall.

"I'll take you to your place," he mumbled, and Sakura could see the way he eyed her son's shock of white hair as he hid behind his mother's legs.

–

They arrived at a leisurely place, Sakura carrying her toddler and Kakashi with his hands in his pockets, neither one of them saying a word.

Her apartment was almost exactly the way she had left it; a few things had been moved or upturned during the investigation after she had been declared a missing-nin, but nothing was taken. Everything was covered in a fine layer of dust. The shades had all been drawn, allowing only tiny slivers of sunlight to peek through, casting the room in a hazy brown glow. Sakura looked to the door of her bedroom and her memory flooded with images of the last time she had shared that bed with Kakashi. She thought of the framed picture of Team 7 she had left behind on her dresser.

"Why did you leave?" Kakashi spoke at last, fingering one of the dead houseplants on Sakura's kitchen table. Sakura moved to the opposite end of the room, setting her child down tenderly and giving him a kiss on the forehead. He squirmed behind his mother shyly and hugged her leg.

"I think you understand why I left," she half-laughed, crossing her arms. Her tired eyes twinkled with mirth, but behind her emerald irises swirled something a bit darker.

"No, actually, I don't understand," Kakashi replied evenly. His voice was as indifferent as ever.

"The brightest medical-nin of her age, knocked up out of wedlock on her 21st birthday," Sakura snorted. "I couldn't stay in Konoha. I wouldn't have been able to bear the shame."

Then, as an afterthought: "I can hardly stand it now."

Kakashi let out a sad breath. "Since when did Haruno Sakura care about trivial things like that?"

Little by little, Sakura's resolve was breaking away in pieces. The emotional wall she had spent the past four years building up was disintegrating. She wasn't surprised that seeing her former team leader and lover after so much time away would have that effect on her; in truth, she had planned on never seeing him again, so being in his presence now left her in a perpetual state of shock.

"I already messed up my life. And his," she took a frightened step towards Kakashi and her child followed, pressing his small forehead to the back of her thigh. "I couldn't mess up another one."

Kakashi silently swallowed the lump that was forming in his throat. His fists clenched and unclenched at his sides. Sakura took another step forward and stopped.

"His name is Sakumo," she murmured, her eyes getting wet. At the mention of his name, the boy peeked out from behind his mother. His nervous black eyes focused on the strange man.

Kakashi's own visible eye glistened with moisture. Bile rose in the Jounin's throat as he finally asked the question that had been nagging at the back of his thoughts for days, ever since he had first laid eyes on the boy with a wave of unkempt silver hair back in Lightning Country: "Why does he look like me?"

It was a broken whisper.

Sakura choked back a sob, a single tear spilling over and rolling down her cheek.

"Because... he is your son."

When Kakashi's cool demeanor crumbled, standing there in Sakura's apartment, it was nearly imperceptible. Without another word, he turned, grasped the doorknob, opened the door, and disappeared, slamming it shut behind him.

Sakura crumpled to the floor and sobbed.

–

"Thank you for agreeing to see me, Kakashi," Sakura said sincerely. Her green eyes met his dark ones as her slender fingers curled around the mug of coffee set before her.

The past week of readjusting to her new life in Konoha had been difficult, but her friends and family had welcomed her back with open arms; for that, Sakura was beyond grateful. Her parents had cried with joy upon seeing their daughter alive and well, and were just as elated to see their grandson for the first time. Naruto had squeezed her so tightly that Sakura thought he would snap her in half, and even Sasuke had said that he was relieved that she was okay. Ino had punched her on the arm for being an idiot before bursting into tears and hugging her almost as hard as Naruto had. Tsunade, although angry at first, offered Sakura her old job back, graciously wiping her criminal status from the record books.

Nobody had judged her too harshly, considering the circumstances, and everyone had been excited to meet Sakumo.

Everyone, that is, except Kakashi.

The Jounin's own steaming black beverage went untouched as he watched Sakura carefully with one eye. He was afraid that if he looked away, or even blinked, she would once more cease to exist in his world.

"Where is he?" Kakashi asked, absentmindedly stirring a spoon in his coffee. "Where is Sakumo?"

Sakura lifted her mug to her lips and sipped, mmming as the warm liquid slid down her throat.

"My parents are watching him. I figured it'd be good for them to get acquainted sooner rather than later, and it's best that we have this discussion alone."

Kakashi hummed his agreement. "We do need to talk."

"Yes," Sakura replied quietly, setting her coffee down. "We do."

Kakashi pushed his mug aside.

"Listen, I don't know why you ran away," his voice dropped to a low rumble as he spoke, a pensive expression painted across his features. It was rare to see the infamously aloof Copy Ninja let his guard down, even if only this much. "I don't know if it was something I did, or something I said, or if you believed that night we spent together was a mistake, but I've thought of you, and that night, every day since you left. I never stopped searching for you."

Sakura swallowed hard, shuddering beneath his unwavering gaze. "I know."

"I never stopped searching for you," he repeated.

Sakura regarded him, her sage eyes unblinking. "I know."

–

Sakura reached for his face, dipping her pale fingers below the edge of the mask and tugging it down slowly to reveal his straight nose, thin lips, and angular jaw. Lightning flashed just outside the window of Kakashi's studio apartment, temporarily illuminating the older ninja's features in a bright wash of light. He was just as handsome as she'd remembered.

Kakashi leaned down then, pressing his exposed lips to Sakura's. He kissed her tenderly at first, his hold on her light, as though she were a ghost that would dissipate into a wisp of smoke if he gripped too tightly.

The green-eyed kunoichi pulled back, interrupting the kiss to search his face, and the emotion she saw there amongst the shadows wrenched her gut: years of sadness, regret, and worry were etched into his features.

"He looks so much like you, Kakashi," Sakura whispered as she snaked her fingers behind his head, to feel the soft hairs at the nape of his neck. "More and more, every day… whenever I looked at him… I missed you."

Sakura's eyes watered and Kakashi wrapped her up in an embrace, planting a hot trail of kisses along her jaw and down her throat, a new sense of urgency coiling deep in his belly.

He was still so angry with her, still reconciling with the fact that she left so unexpectedly and now she was back just as unexpectedly, and yet he needed her now with a desperation he didn't know he was capable of.

With a newfound determination, Kakashi pulled Sakura flush against him, claiming her mouth with his own. The back of Sakura's knees hit the edge of the bed and they tumbled backwards together, wasting no time in stripping each other's clothes and exploring each other's bodies with hands and lips and teeth.

When they became one at last Sakura tumbled over the cliff almost instantaneously, stars bursting behind her eyelids as she held on to Kakashi for dear life. She came two more times after that in rapid succession, and when Kakashi watched her face contort in pleasure, crying out his name a final time, it kickstarted his own unravelling.

At the last possible second, he withdrew from her with a groan, spending himself on her stomach.

–

"Your hair," Kakashi murmured, rubbing a lock of the chemically-colored strands between his fingertips.

Sakura shrugged nonchalantly, tracing an invisible circle on the bed with her finger. "Pink hair would've been too easy to find. But it's just hair. It'll grow back in."

Already, her pink roots were beginning to show.

"All this time…" Kakashi trailed off. His voice sounded weary, betraying his age despite his youthful appearance. "Why didn't you tell me?"

Sakura bit her lip. "I was ashamed of what everyone in the village would think if word got out."

Kakashi sat up in the bed. "That's bullshit, and we both know it."

"It's true," Sakura insisted half-heartedly.

"You left, carrying my child, without telling anyone or leaving so much as a note. The least you can do after all these years is tell me the truth."

"Our child," Sakura corrected, sitting up herself. "Carrying our child. And… I was afraid."

"Afraid of what?"

"Afraid you wouldn't want me," she answered, fiddling the fabric of a blanket between her anxious fingers. "Afraid you would reject me, turn me away. Or even worse, I was afraid that you would do the noble thing, and I'd have ruined your life with a child you didn't want– that you never wanted in the first place. I couldn't burden you like that."

Sakura sighed and ran a shaky hand through her dyed hair as she mustered up the courage to continue speaking. "But mostly I was afraid that everything I believed was between us, that everything we had done together, was a lie. I was afraid that you didn't feel the same way about me that I felt about you. I didn't want to stick around to find out that you didn't love me like I loved you."

Sakura's fingers stopped moving and she stared down at her hands.

"Who ever said that I didn't love you? You never even asked me," Kakashi bit out, the bitterness seeping into his voice as the feelings of years of hurt and anguish began to resurface. "You really think that poorly of me that I wouldn't care for a child of mine? That I would turn away the mother of my child at the door? You truly think I didn't feel anything for you, after everything we had been through?"

Sakura whimpered and shook her head.

"Kakashi–"

"Did you think that I went to bed with you that night just because I was drunk, or because I thought you were easy?"

"No, I–"

"I think you should go," he said with finality, turning away from her.

"Kakashi, please," Sakura begged. Her fingers shook as she touched them lightly along his rigid shoulders. "I know it's not fair of me to ask anything of you, after what I did. But if you could find it in your heart to forgive me, we could be a family. A real family."

Sakura wiped her eye on the back of a trembling hand.

"Or at the very least, you could be a father to Sakumo. You can hate me all you want, but please be there for him. It wasn't right for me to deprive him of his right to know his father. It was selfish. I was selfish. I've destroyed all of our lives."

Sakura was sobbing now, burying her tear-streaked face in her hands.

"Go home, Sakura," Kakashi reiterated. Her name shook as it left his tongue.

Sakura rose and dressed quickly, sniffling and coughing as she fought back another bout of self-pity, but turned around at the door, hesitating.

"Ino is throwing a birthday party for Sakumo next weekend at my parents' house," she offered. "It'd be great if you could be there."

When Kakashi said nothing, but only kept his back to her, Sakura slipped on her shoes and walked out into the rain.

–

Tsunade took a long drag of the lit cigarette balanced between her perfectly manicured fingers, causing Kakashi to give her an odd expression.

"I know, I know," she sneered as she exhaled wisps of smoke. "Bad habit."

Kakashi turned his head to look back over the village, every surface awash in sunlight, leaning forward over the railing beside the legendary kunoichi with his wrists crossed. Somewhere nearby, a bird chirped merrily in a tree.

After a few terse moments of silence, Tsunade sighed. "Don't be angry with her."

Kakashi didn't respond.

"She's young and dumb. She made a mistake. You've already missed out on the past four years– that can't be changed– but don't miss out on the rest. You'll regret it."

When Kakashi still appeared unaffected, Tsunade took another drag. He glanced at her from the side of his eye.

"Don't make the same mistakes I did," she scolded softly, her eyes taking on a foggy look that reminded Kakashi of the way she used to look whenever she spoke about Jiraiya.

After stubbing out her cigarette, the blonde woman turned to face Kakashi at last and gave him a smile. "Forgive her."

–

Baby blue balloons and silver streamers filled the large but modest living room. A pile of presents were stacked in the corner, and on the kitchen counter sat a frosted sheet cake with the words "Happy 4th Birthday Sakumo" spelled out in cobalt icing.

The room was filled with the din of conversation punctuated by an occasional laugh, a happy buzz electrifying the atmosphere. Sakura sat on the sofa in front of the coffee table with Sakumo in her lap, dramatically gasping along with the child's giddy surprise as he opened Hinata and Naruto's gift, tearing away the colorful patterned paper with fervor. A grinning Ino crouched beside her new godson, ready to hand over the next present.

Suddenly, the room went deathly quiet, and Sakura followed the trail of everyone's eyes to see Hatake Kakashi standing just inside the doorway.

"Kakashi," she breathed out in disbelief.

Obviously uncomfortable with being the center of attention, the silver-haired Jounin rubbed the back of his head with one hand.

"Yo."

"Late as usual, Hatake," Ino huffed, and Sakura jabbed her friend with her elbow.

Kakashi shrugged off her comment, then flicked his eye to the dark-haired woman on the couch.

"Sakura," he started. "I wish there was a better time and place for this, but…"

Ino gingerly took Sakumo from his mother's arms and tilted her head to toward Kakashi, indicating for her to go to him. Unsteady on her feet, Sakura rose to face the silver-haired shinobi.

"Before, you told me that you were afraid. Well, I was afraid, too. Afraid that you were lost somewhere. Afraid that some less-than-respectable people had taken you. Afraid that you were... dead."

Kakashi's voice faltered and he shoved his hands in his pockets. "I was afraid that I'd never get to tell you how I feel. That I'd never see you again. I don't want to feel that way, the way I've felt these past few years without you, ever again."

Sakura stepped close enough that she could reach out and touch him. She shook her head, her eyes misting over.

"Kakashi… you don't have to do this."

"I like to believe that this would have happened eventually if you had stayed. But I don't want to waste my time wondering about what could have been," Kakashi continued, reaching up and pulling his headband off to look at her with both eyes: one red, one black. "I want to spend my time enjoying what we could have now, as a family."

On the last word, Kakashi produced a ring from his front pocket. It was a simple steel band with an embedded aqua-colored stone. Sakura pursed her lips as tears began to stream down her cheeks, covering her mouth with a hand.

"I love you, Sakura. I've loved you for a long time. I want you… and Sakumo… to become Hatake."

Sakura nodded her head, whispering between her parted fingers: "Of course."

With a delicate movement, Kakashi slipped the ring on Sakura's corresponding finger and pulled her in for a kiss, causing the entire room of onlookers to erupt into applause and cheers.

When they pulled apart, breaking the kiss, Sakura threw her arms around Kakashi and buried her wet, flushed face in the space between his neck and shoulder. He embraced her back just as fervently.

Sakumo ran to his mother and father then, whining to be held. Sakura laughed as she wiped her tears, picking up their son and cradling him on her hip. She planted a kiss on his cheek with a smack.

Kakashi smiled beneath his mask, the first genuine smile he'd smiled in over four years, and ruffled his son's hair with a gloved hand. "Happy Birthday, Sakumo."

"There's still one thing we need to discuss," Sakura stated, turning to her future husband.

"Hm? And what's that?"

The green-eyed woman looked the father of her child in the eyes and grinned.

"When are we going to enroll him in the academy?"